Archive for the ‘backyards’ category

When I sit at our wooden table late at night and look into the kitchen I see 78 photos plastered across the tall cupboard doors – of our life, this year, from the past.

There is a Claire surrounded by feathers at a festival. There is a wide view over Kabul and it’s staggering mountains, all dusty brown and grey and pale blue – a photo I took when visiting my dear friends. There’s Arthur the dog in a coloured bow-tie he wore for a special occasion, and Alice with sparklers at midnight in our friends’ backyard.

There’s my mates and I with our guitars and drums, belting out some tunes from under the shed I repaired with left over pieces of corrugated iron. There is Louise holding a cake with candles alight, resting in a rock in the bush, Jane dressed in a homemade Miss Piggy costume, the dog and the duck sitting together on our lawn out the back, the mouse on an old German clock I bought from a very odd antique dealer. There is swimming in the ocean, and a campfire, and the faces of many of the people we love.

What a strange and beautiful life we lead. These were some of my dreams, and whenever I can, when I’m scrambling along rocks with my girls looking across the moving sea, or yarning at tea time about why life is this way or that, or gazing at the orange clouds that parade in the western sky as the day is fading, I tell them this is what I dreamed of.

I often think of tragedy, in places far away or lives close by – like a weight in a pack on my back, like a load on my shoulders, like a badge that ensures I never forget.

But still, beauty. The dreams I had, the ever-present joys of the natural world and discovering it, of our animal friends, of finely crafted instruments, of treasured relationships, I carry those on my shoulders too, and my kitchen cupboard is a reminder.

If you like fire or bricks or pizza, and especially if you like building your own appliances in the backyard, I commend to you some work by a mate of mine. Sev’s Oven gives comprehensive instructions about the building of his second backyard oven, as well as the odd good thought on neighbours, food and his dog Clancy.